Connexions module: m11357

Inverters and Logic

Bill Wilson
This work is produced by The Connexions Project and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License

Abstract
Introducing inverter circuit, and building circuits which perform the NOR and NAND function based on this inverter circuit.

As you already know, or will nd out shortly, from taking a class in digital logic, logic circuits are primarily based upon a circuit called an inverter. An inverter simply takes a signal and gives you the opposite one. For instance, if a high voltage (a "one") is placed on the input of an inverter, it returns a low voltage (a "zero"). Figure 1 is a simple inverter based on a MOSFET transistor:

Figure 1:

Inverter circuit

If Vin is zero, the MOSFET is turned o (Vgs is < VT ) and so no current ows through the resistor, and Vout = Vdd , a high. If Vin is high (and we assume that VT for the MOSFET is signicantly less than Vin ) then the transistor is turned on, and if R and W are chosen so that enough current ows through R to drop L most of Vdd across it, then Vout will be low.
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The way this is usually described is through a transfer function which tells us what the output voltage is as a function of the input voltage. Let's digress for just a minute and see how such a function can be arrived at. Looking back at Figure 1 it should be easy to see that
Vdd = Id Rd + Vds

(1)

We can re-write this as an equation for Id .

Id = Vds Vdd Rd Rd

(2)

This is called a load-line equation. It says that Id varies linearly with Vds (with a negative slope) and has a vertical o-set of Vdd . Let's suppose we have the MOSFET transistor for which we have already plotted Rd the characteristic curves in a previous plot . We will let Vdd = 5 Volts, and let Rd = 1k. From (2) we can see that when Vds = 0, Id will be 5 mA, and when Vds = Vdd , Id will be 0. This then gives us a straight line on the characteristic curve plot which is called the load line. This is shown in Figure 2. By looking back at the schematic for the inverter in Figure 1 we see that the same current Id ows through the load resistor, Rd , and through the transistor. Thus, the correct value of current and voltage for the circuit for any given gate voltage is the simultaneous solution of the load line equation and the transistor behavior, which, of course, is just the intersection of the load line with the appropriate characteristic curve. Thus it is a simple matter of drawing vertical lines down from each Vin curve or Vgs value down to the horizontal axis to nd out what the appropriate Vdd or output voltage will be for the inverter. Assuming that Vin only goes up to 5 Volts, the resulting curve that we get look like Figure 3. This is not a great transfer characteristic. Vin has to get fairly large before Vout starts to fall, and even with the full 5 Volt input, Vout is still greater than 1 Volt. Picking a transistor with a small VT and a bigger load resistor would give us a better response, but at least with this example you can see what is going on.
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Figure 2:

Characteristic curves with load line

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Figure 3:

Transfer characteristics for the inverter circuit.

Based on this simple inverter circuit, we can build circuits which perform the NOR and NAND function.
Cout = (A + B)

(3) (4)

and
Cout = (AB)

It should, by now, be obvious to you how the two circuits in Figure 4 can perform the NAND and NOR function. It turns out that with the capability to do NAND and NOR, we can build up any kind of logic function we desire.

Figure 4:

NAND and NOR circuits

Let's look at the inverter a little more closely (Figure 5). Usually, the load for the inverter will be the next stage of logic which, along with the associated interconnect wiring, we can model as a simple capacitor. The value of the capacitance will vary, but it will be on the order of 1012 F.

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Figure 5:

Driving a capacitive load

When the input to the inverter switches instantaneously to a low value, current will stop owing through the transistor, and instead will start to charge up the load capacitance. The output voltage will follow the usual RC charging curve with a time constant given just by the product of R times C . If C is 1013 F, then to get a rise time of 1 ns we would have to make R about 104 . As we shall see later, it is virtually impossible to make a 10 k resistor using integrated circuit techniques. Remember: L R= (5)
A

And thus, to get a really big resistance we need either a very tiny A (Too hard to achieve and control.), a really BIG L (Takes up too much room on the chip) or a huge (Again, very hard to control when you get to the very low doping densities that would be required.) Even if we could nd a way to build such big integrated circuit resistors, there would still be a problem. The current owing through the resistor when the MOSFET is on would be approximately
I = = =
V R 5V 104

(6)
4

5 10

Which doesn't seem like much current until you consider that a Pentium microprocessor has about 6 million gates in it. This would mean a net current of 300Amps owing into the CPU chip! We've got to come up with a better solution .
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